Yesterday, a team of scientists from around the world gathered in Switzerland with the intentions of using a Large Hadron Collider to recreate the Big Bang. While the test was considered a success, the world didn’t end – despite what pundits said.

Still, the team of Apocalypse-hungry scientists are determined to usher in the end of days, and the 30 Cornell researchers and students helping with the research, who have had their own fully functional Hadron Colider in Ithaca for twelve years, are determined to do their part.

WSYR reports:

"What we're doing is creating conditions that are similar to the conditions that existed about one-ten billionth of a second after the Big Bang," says Cornell physics professor Peter Wittich…

 

… Cornell will have a team of about 30 people on the project who cut their teeth here. These massive machines take the tiniest of particles, speed them up and smash them into each other; the resulting explosion of particles, they hope, will recreate the moment the universe began. What drives these scientists, Wittich says, is the chance to try and shed a little light on some very abstract questions people have been pondering for years…

 

… Professor Wittich -- like some of the other professors -- will be splitting time teaching in Ithaca and working in Switzerland with the collider.

 

Scientists plan to continue test runs until December, and then as soon as possible send two proton beams at once through the machine to begin hopefully unlocking clues about the earth.

Is “unlocking clues about the earth” a euphemism for “killing everyone on the planet?” Sounds like it.

Thankfully, substantial results from the research aren’t expected for another 50 years. And so, our generation won’t have to really worry about it.

Our children, however…